Mobile and context: divide or conquer?

Abstract:

The interdisciplinary field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), having barely matured past its adolescent shoes, now faces the challenge of meaningfully integrating Mobile Human Computer Interaction (MHCI). MHCI however, when viewed as an emerging independent discipline, does not have the luxury to leisurely plod along. Amid the great diversity of initiatives and interactions, the challenge is to compare or group similar interactions in order to identify synergies and commonalities from practice to feed back into theory. The authors argue for and present a matrix based on context and mobility. This matrix presents the stance of the user and how the users engage with the mobile technology in different contexts versus different mobility possibilities.